


The Constellation Game

by Miss_Peletier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (ignores the end of S3 completely in favor of fluff), Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Stargazing, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7359493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Peletier/pseuds/Miss_Peletier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus takes Abby on a stargazing date post-S3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Constellation Game

           The rover slowed to a stop, arrived at its destination in the middle of a large, open field, and Abby Griffin stepped out into the cooling night air. 

           “It’s not so bad, once you get used to it,” Marcus reassured her, seeing the look of relief on her face once her feet hit solid ground. “The more you ride in them, the easier it’ll be.”

           “I’ll take your word for it,” she retorted playfully, helping him retrieve several blankets, a book, and a flashlight from the back of the car. “If I had my way, I’d walk everywhere.”

           He shot her a bemused look, but didn’t offer further comment. A discussion, she figured, was being reserved for another time. For now, they had more pressing matters on their minds.

She helped him lay the blanket on the damp grass, shivering involuntarily in the cold. She was grateful they’d had the foresight to bring a second blanket with which to cover up – the weather was starting to get cold when the sun went down, but they hadn’t had a clear night in weeks. If they didn’t take this opportunity now, she knew Marcus was afraid they wouldn’t have it again. 

           Between his guard shifts, his duties as Chancellor, and her myriad of responsibilities in Medical, there was a ring of truth to his fears. Tonight was the first night they’d both had free, and if the worst they experienced was a chill in the air, she’d take it. They both would. 

           So they lay down on the fleece-covered grass, moving to lift the second blanket over their shoulders as Marcus pulled out the book of constellations he’d been poring over for the past several weeks. 

           Every time she visited him while he was on guard duty, he’d had the book in his hands and a smile on his face. There was something about the stars that captivated him, ensnared his imagination and filled him with a youthful joy. She didn’t have the natural curiosity about them that he did, but if he was excited about it, so was she.

          But finding a time to wander outside together had proved more difficult than they’d thought, and it was that sentiment that he expressed as they finally sat under the glistening lights together.

         “I didn’t think we’d be able to do this,” he said. “Well, not before the snow fell at least.”

         “I guess you could say the stars aligned,” she responded with a joking smirk, and he chuckled. They locked gazes, twin smiles gracing their lips in the dim moonlight.

         “You could say that, yes.”

         He wrapped an arm around her, drawing her to him, and she sighed as she collided into his warmth. He practically radiated heat. She loved being close to him under normal circumstances, and that desire was only magnified by the cooling temperature.

         “You’re freezing!” he observed, and she responded by snuggling further into his chest as she wrapped an arm across him. 

         “Not anymore,” she said sternly, suddenly worried he’d call off their stargazing because he thought she was uncomfortable. Nothing could have been farther from the truth, not now: not with a blanket over her shoulders and him giving off heat like a furnace. Thankfully, he didn’t protest.

         “What did you want to show me?” she asked. “I assume there’s something specific you’ve been looking at up there for a month.”

          She turned her head to look at him, and he nodded as he clicked on the flashlight he’d shoved in his pocket before they’d left.

          “This book…it’s fantastic. It has so many constellations, and it gives the history behind each one. They all have a history, a reason for existence. It’s fascinating, Abby.” She didn’t have to look at him to know he was grinning, and his good humor was contagious. No matter how long a day it had been in Medical or otherwise, a happy Marcus was always enough to take her mood up a few notches. 

          “Have you found them all?” she eyed the book suspiciously, noting the quantity of pages and trying to compute the hours of guard duty it would take to find the patterns listed on each one. Unlikely, but not impossible. Or so she thought. 

         “No!” he exclaimed. “But Bellamy, Nathan and I have tried. We’ve only made it about halfway through’.”

          As if to prove his point, a folded piece of paper fell out of the center of the book, fluttering gracefully to the blanket in the gentle night breeze. Marcus moved to pick up the page but she was quicker, and she felt his muscles tense as he realized she was going to read it.  _Does he not want me to see this?_ They didn’t keep secrets from each other, not now, not after everything they’d suffered through together.

          So she tried not to be alarmed by his reaction: she trusted him. But that didn’t stop her from picking it up and squinting, barely able to make out Bellamy’s spindly handwriting in the deepening darkness.

         “Bellamy – four. Miller – three. Kane – one.” She looked at him, slightly relieved, raising her eyebrows. “What’s this?”

         “It’s a contest,” he admitted, sounding embarrassed. “Every night, we look at a new constellation and whoever finds it first gets a point. Once one of us reaches seven points, the winner gets to take two days off. The other two of us will cover the missing shifts, even if we have to work twice that day.” 

         Abby couldn’t stop herself: she laughed out loud.

         “Seriously, Marcus? You made this into a competition?”

         “It wasn’t me! It was Bellamy’s idea. And it’s quite fun, I might add.”

         She tilted her head and cocked an eyebrow.

        “Don’t you think it could be a little dangerous, allowing them to be distracted from their shifts like that?”

         He paused for a moment, and she began to worry she’d offended him. She hadn’t meant to be harsh or to ruin their fun, she’d meant only to prove a point – even though they were at peace with Azgeda and all the other grounder clans, it only took one incident for everything to fall apart again.

        “It doesn’t take them long to find the constellations,” he said, intending to justify his case. “And I thought it was better to let them focus on that, even if it’s just for a few moments, than losing them in everything else. Everything they’ve been through. Having guns in their hands again isn’t easy for them, Abby, and this helps them to forget.”

        Suddenly, Abby felt that familiar pressure on her chest, that searing sensation on her neck. Her fingers twitched with the ghostly sensation of a scalpel she’d once held, a scalpel that had cut into her daughter’s flesh, a scalpel she couldn’t bring herself to so much as glance at again.  _Everything we’ve been through._

        Their guns were her scalpel: talismans of memories they’d rather forget than remember. Unfortunately, their minds didn’t operate that way. And no matter how many times Clarke and Marcus insisted that they forgave her, that ALIE was the one to blame, their voices often ricocheted off the seemingly bulletproof strength of those horrific recollections.

         She’d have to take them down brick-by-brick, dismantling and disqualifying them over time until they were nothing more than abandoned structures where her mind no longer wished to live. And until then, she had her daughter and Marcus to help it go on vacation for a little while, to help it move its things out of the structures that were only toxic to her wellbeing.

          Suddenly, she thought she knew why he had been so insistent on her coming out here with him tonight.  _It isn’t easy for them…it helps them to forget._ They helped each other to forget all the horrible things, all the darkness that had had invaded their lives since Jaha had forced them into the City of Light. 

_You help me to forget, Marcus._

         “You’re right,” she said and she felt Marcus stiffen, this time in surprise. Clearly, he hadn’t expected her agreement. “They could use the distraction, something to cheer them up. It hasn’t been easy for them.”

 _It hasn’t been easy for us, either,_ she thought mournfully. But that wasn’t a topic they needed to discuss now, almost a month after they’d gotten each other back again. They needed to focus on the future, not the past. 

           That wasn’t to say there weren’t good days and bad days, days when they slept soundly and days when they woke next to the other person in nightmare-induced cold sweat. Slowly, the good days were outnumbering the bad days. For that, she was thankful. 

           Her skin was warmer now, and she felt herself starting to relax into him.

          “You’re losing,” she observed teasingly, stealing another glance at the score sheet. “Bellamy has four and Miller has three, but you only have one.” 

          Marcus made a noise of indignation.

         “They cheat,” he muttered. 

          Abby grinned. “So you’re saying this has  _nothing_  to do with the almost thirty-year age gap between you and them?”

          “No, it doesn’t,” Marcus insisted, indignant. “I’ve caught Bellamy and Miller out here with the book when I wasn’t on duty – they sneak into my office and steal it. They’ve found a few of them before I had a chance to look. Then when they come up, they know exactly the constellations are.”

         “Hmmm,” Abby murmured, shifting so she lay directly on top of him with her chin on his chest. The blanket tangled in her legs, restricting her movement, but she was past the point of caring as he moved one of his hands to rest on her lower back as he began to play with the fabric of her shirt. She made a show of giving his sentiment consideration. “Well, are  _you_ opposed to cheating, Chancellor Kane?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows playfully. 

         “I should be,” he said. “I should be, but…”

         “But you’re not,” she finished, her smile widening. “If only our people knew. What would they say? Their Chancellor, advocating for cheating at his own constellation game.”

          His teeth were almost blindingly white in the moonlight, and she felt something flutter inside her chest that had fallen still for weeks. 

         “Are you willing to help me, Doctor Griffin?” he asked, attempting to angle his head so he could look her in the eyes. 

         “Of course,” she said, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. He hummed in contentment, tracing his fingers up and down her back. They left trails of concentrated warmth in their wake, her skin tingling with the memory of the contact. “Have you known me to be opposed to bending a few rules?”

         “Not exactly,” he said, and she pressed a few more chaste kisses to his lips and neck. “But if you keep doing that, I’m going to forget about the stars  _and_  the game,” he added in a low whisper, and a thrill rushed through her. She was grateful for the cover the darkness provided: he couldn’t see the flush in her cheeks. 

         “Stars first,” she said, trying to calm her racing pulse. A second half of her sentence was silent but present just the same, and she felt electrified as she inclined her head to press a final kiss to his jawline. 

        “Stars first,” he agreed, and she rolled off of him to lay on the rock-solid ground. They both sat up, re-adjusting the blanket and holding the flashlight to the next constellation Marcus didn’t remember finding.

        “Orion,” he announced. “The Hunter.”

        Abby took a look at the diagram and snorted.

        “That seems a bit complicated, Marcus.”

        “For the complicated ones, we don’t require the winner to find the whole constellation,” he said. “If they find enough of it to prove they’re correct, we give it to them.”

        “Fair enough,” Abby said. “Then let’s find enough of Orion to prove you’re correct.”

         He pulled her close again, and she leaned into him. Minutes flew past as they stared up at the sky, losing themselves in the glowing orbs that danced above them. Eventually, nearly ten minutes into their search, Abby found something of use.

        “Do you see those three bright stars?” she questioned, excitement lacing every syllable of her sentence. “Right there!”

        “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific,” he said, eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

        She grabbed his hand and raised it to the sky, using it to point him in the right direction.

        “Right  _there_ , Marcus. They’re all in a line.”

         He shook his head, still not understanding what she meant. Abby sighed.  _Why am I not surprised you’re losing this game?_

         Finally, she resorted to taking his head in her hands and guiding his gaze to where it needed to land.

         “If you don’t see it now, I don’t know if I can help you,” she sighed, exasperated. It was so clearly there, right in front of him, and yet…

         “I see it!” he exclaimed, comparing the line of stars to the diagram in his book. “I think that’s his belt.”

         Abby let out a yell of excitement, and Marcus crushed her in a brief embrace. 

        “Great job, Abby,” he said, and a smile hid inside his voice. 

         They moved on to the next one: Scorpius – The Scorpion, as its name implied. Abby vaguely remembered learning something about scorpions in Earth History, when they’d covered various types of Earth bugs. The mythology was lost on her, even if Marcus found it fascinating.

         It was fitting, then, that he was the one who located Scorpius.

        “Do you see it?” he asked, bouncing on the blanket with near-childish glee. “I found it!”

         She didn’t, even after his numerous attempts to point it out to her. But she figured it couldn’t hurt him to pretend: after all, he was the one competing. She was just helping him get on a level playing field with the kids. 

         Figuring Bellamy and Miller couldn’t have made it more than three constellations ahead, they decided Ursa Major – The Larger Bear - would be their last. That one was a joint effort – Abby found the tail, and Marcus connected the stars around it to form the bear’s body. 

         “Do you think you’ll remember where they are after tonight?” she asked as they lay back together, assuming their former position after he closed the book and secured the score sheet on the page of the last constellation they’d “officially” found.

         “Yes,” he said, without a hint of hesitation. “I’ve had such great help in finding them, how could I forget?”

         “Well, I think I know a way,” she whispered with a smirk, eyes sparkling devilishly.

         She leaned down and kissed him hard, running her fingers through his hair as he opened up to her instantly. Already lost in each other, they cast away the pesky blanket that only served to tangle in their limbs. They’d be plenty warm enough without it, she found.

         They rotated so she lay underneath him and he kissed his way down her neck, the softness of the blanket and the gentle scratching of his beard combining to make her head spin. For the first time that night, Abby’s shiver wasn’t a result of the cold.

          “I’ll remember,” he whispered against her skin, slipping a few fingers beneath the waistband of her jeans. They were still wearing too many layers of clothing, she thought, although that would be easily remedied.

         “Prove it,” Abby responded, lifting her hips so he could guide her pants down her legs and continue kissing his way down her stomach. 

         “I will,” he said, accepting her challenge. 

                                                              ***

         And a week later, when she saw Bellamy Blake celebrating his victory in a mysterious constellation contest the rest of Arkadia knew nothing about, all she could do was laugh.


End file.
